Episode 2: Getting Medieval on Sola Scriptura
Are you frustrated with the way in which SJWs are trying to “woke-wash” the history of the United States? Just wait till you hear what the Protestant reformers did to the medieval understanding of Scripture!
Video with subscription at Unauthorized.tv (History and Logos Channel)
Psalm 109 Dixit Dominus
References
Phrases
Video with subscription at Unauthorized.tv (History and Logos Channel)
Psalm 109 Dixit Dominus
Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus nosterThe Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand.
Psalm 109 Dixit Dominus
Choir psalter, Germany, ca. 1380
Until I make thy enemies thy footstool.
The Lord will send forth the scepter of thy power out of Sion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.
Thine is the dominion in the day of thy power, amid the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day-star have I begotten thee.
The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedech.
The Lord upon thy right hand hath overthrown kings in the day of his wrath.
He shall judge among the nations; he shall fill the land with the fallen: He shall smite in sunder the heads in the land of many.
He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up his head.
O Lord, our Lord, how admirable is Thy name in the whole earth!
For Thy magnificence is exalted above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou has perfected praise because of Thine enemies, that Thou mayest destroy the enemy and the avenger.
For I will behold Thy heavens, the works of Thy fingers: the moon and the stars which Thou hast set.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that Thou visitest him?
Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, and hast set him over the works of Thy hands.
All things Thou hast put under his feet: sheep and all oxen, yea, also the beasts of the field.
The birds of the air and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.
O Lord, our Lord, how admirable is Thy name in all the earth!
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| Melchizedek, high priest and king of Salem, offers Abram bread and wine Reims Cathedral |
Phrases
- Sola scriptura
- Lex orandi, lex credendi
- Psalter (with links to examples of medieval psalters)
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| Bible cross-references by Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild |
People
- John P. McCown (1815-1879); on the motion to change the name of the McCown Longspur
- Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), not to be confused with Thomas Cromwell (ca. 1485-1540), both active in the English Reformation. Cromwell ordered the burning of the statues of the Virgin Mary in 1538. My bad!
- Martin Luther (1483-1546), famous for his insults. Fencing Bear asks: “Hate Trump? Blame Luther!”
- Prosper of Aquitaine (ca. 390-ca. 455)
- Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
- Cassiodorus (ca. 485-ca. 585)
- Peter Lombard (ca. 1096-1160)
- Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of El Elyon (Genesis 14:18-20)
Texts
- Council of Trent, Fourth Session, Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures (1546)
- Martin Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian (1520)
- The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Office of the Dead (Angelus Press, 2015)
- Rachel Fulton Brown, Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)—paperback coming soon!
Further reading
- Timothy Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship (London: T&T Clark, 2007)
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| Our Lady of Walsingham Modern replica of medieval image burned in 1538 at the order of Thomas Cromwell |
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Course Study Guide
I read your Fencing Bear post and I can understand your lack of enthusiasm for Luther, but this is too clever by half, it seems to me. I am with you insofar as you argue that education is an important part of sight; education, I believe (parenting, too) is really about preparing yourself *or your charges* to see. To be able to notice things that might otherwise seem quotidian or simply unremarkable and to appreciate just how significant those things are. (Like knowing about the Apocrypha and why the Protestants decided not to include them. Roman Catholics don't include the Book of Mormon or the Institutes of Religion, either). This is true in all of the arts. It is the difference between being able to listen to a symphony and play one - your relationship to what you are doing changes.
ReplyDeleteBut, the Pope represents more than authority. Protestants, after all, have professional clergy and they train them (mostly). It is not scholarship and learnedness against which Luther was arguing. It was against the natural institutional imperative which he believed corrupted understanding. It is not the great increase in the number of media sources we have today that has undermined credibility in media. It is the institutional leaning and enforcement at historic institutions such as the New York Times that has driven the lack of confidence in media. Abuse, you might argue, of the special status that the "Paper of Record" held, it sought not to report fairly and clearly but instead to direct its reader. It ceased to be concerned with *preparing its charges* to see. That mission was to mean or low.
It is true that the proliferation of other media sources, and more importantly the fact that those sources are largely free, which has hollowed out formerly great institutions and has made it more difficult for them to do the work necessary to ensure accuracy. But these are more indirect effects.
I've had enough long-winded Protestantism vs Catholicism debates to arrive at the conclusion that both are susceptible to corruption from the adversary. It's really no different than the hundreds of different versions of the Bible out there that one can simply pick and choose which one best fits their current beliefs (how convenient!). I feel like the best way to learn scripture, aside from Divine revelation, is via a concordance such as Strong's or Young's.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, the argument here, while clever, seems a bit of a whitewash.
ReplyDeleteWas the Church arguing in the Investiture Controversy that its political (theological?) opponents were ignorant rubes from poor villages? Certainly not. It was making an argument about Authority and in particular, it's own preeminence as the earthly representation of God?
Again - this was not a simple question and the fact is that bishops represented both important land owners, and lords in local and monarchial legal and political questions as well as serving as important prelates in the Church. Both King and Pope had interest in seeing good people selected, but the definition of "good" in this context could be highly situational. The King and Pope naturally had areas of overlapping commonality of interests and areas of disinterest and those factor weighed heavily. The Church and its landholdings were often a good place to park a younger sibling or child of a major ally, ensuring that both sons could enjoy first rank lifestyles honors and privileges without overtaxing the family estate.
In short, these jobs were much like plum government jobs or grants today - ways to reward allies and preserve loyalty (since these appointments could be changed.
Of course, for the Church this was a problem - it needed control over its personnel as well. And the Pope also needed a way to reward allies. His own lands weren't really large enough - and anyway were not a geographically disperse as those of a King or the Emperor.
So it is easy to see why this was an area of conflict on a pragmatic matter. Naturally, when something is this central, an effort is made to establish a governing principle. This is just as true in legal questions today. It is not superstitious at all. But the problem was, the Church's position - that it had authority over "man made" political powers, being itself established by God, came to rely on certain claims particualrly in the 12th and 13th centuries, on the Donation of Constantine.
The confirmation that this was a forgery in the 15th century was a major hit to Church prestige and likely led to a questioning of every other claim the Church made. How many of those were bolstered by "invention" that was not part of the "true" Christian church - the "real" church instituted by Christ? How much of the late Medieval Church had been a human invented solution to a post 1st century problem *of the institution*?
Add to that a discovery that many other fixed ideas about the world (like the Medieval maps that put Jersusalem at the center of the Earth) were undermined by the discovery of the New World?
That the Church resorted to invention to answer complex questions that arose over centuries is not in any way a knock. At least I don't intend it to be - what institution civil, commercial or devotional can avoid the inevitable need to address the wider society of which it is a part? As society changes with time and circumstances, naturally, institutions have to do the same.
Moreover, the Church itself is often seen as a sort of unitary executive where the Pope and Church are interchangeable. Often Popes argued this way. But of course it was far more complex than that.
But when you rely on a principle and argue certain facts to bolster you, and then those fact turn out to be false, it severely erodes your credibility and can lead to people arguing that an individual - lacking the burden of institutional interpretation, and more to the point, the key assumptions that are central to an organizations identity - might get a better answer.
My argument was solely about the way Christianity depends on the psalms, which the debate between Protestants and Catholics over the papacy obscures.
DeleteI tend to think of this in commercial terms - how many firms are locked into certain ways of looking at the market because their product plans and organizational structures only make sense when looking at the problem in a certain way? Modern firms have been much more flexible and responsive, but even today, many firms struggle to incorporate innovation that threatens a core product or service into their offerings. This is why new firms emerge.
ReplyDeleteThe Church was arguing for something like the Communist doctrine of "democratic centrism". The Communists were certain of the robustness of their internal debate structures - like the Universities. Like the Church, the important thing was that the people who got to make these arguments were "qualified" people who were loyal to the wider institution and so would not advance any positions that could truly undermine the institution itself, even as they perhaps entertained "dangerous" ideas in private - like the Devil's Advocate of the late Medieval canonization trials. It was ok for the University Doctors to discuss more fringy theological positions - but that is because it was being done in private and by those authorized to do so, not unlike today's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
On a final note - I wonder how practical it is, if one's project is pointing out the importance of Christianity to Western Civilization and human achievement and advancement, to start by telling Protestants that they are really just Antifa ("Anti-Ca"). Plenty of Protestant thinkers, like Edmund Burke, have appreciated the importance of tradition. Moreover, it is not as if the Protestants were putting Man above God, as modern Lefty movements do. They were not Nietzschean "God is Dead" types.
Concern about the corrupting influence of organizations - how peer and political pressure and effort to be "onside" for the team. To collaborate with colleagues to get results and the prosocial bias that drive this are very legitimate concerns today as they were in the 15th and 16th centuries. The difference was only that in the Medieval period, there was only ONE organization. It should be noted that until the 19th century, it required an Act of Government to create a company.
Most groupings were very small and were partnerships with individuals being totally accountable.
If it is so easy to see the corrupting influence in government and commerce in institutions, why is it so hard to see it in religion?
My point was about the erasure of history, which the Protestants in England did very effectively.
DeleteI will have to listen more carefully, then, as I misunderstood. Certainly the early reformers found themselves attacked by more radical ones. I think I have been told that the last crucifix in England was in Elizabeth's personal chapel.
DeleteFrom Exodus 34:
ReplyDelete11Observe what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 12Be careful not to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst. 13Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles. 14For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
The removal of statues of the conquered seems to be an authorized traditional method of conquering tribes.
PS like the series. You are crushing, but am only up to episode 2. I will continue watching on unauthorizedtv.com!
Good point about the statues! The Protestants often invoked the commandment against idols to justify destroying Christian art.
DeleteThanks for watching!